nothing comes from nothing (nothing ever could)
by Celia Stanton
Summary: "Always," she repeats, and it's a vow in a way, because for her, he is; he is her permanent, as close to everything and everlasting as she'll ever get. Or, five times "The Sound of Music" is important to Felicity Smoak.


___Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein do not belong to me. This story is purely for entertainment purposes. No infringement is intended._

_Author's Notes: Please direct all blame to nonplatoniccircumstances and puzzledhats on Tumblr, because this is all their fault. _

_This story came about because I made a crack in a meme (who, me?) in which I equated egregious OOCness to Oliver Queen dancing a la Maria in "The Hills Are Alive" from "The Sound of Music." Liz then said she had a visual of him dancing with his daughter to "StM" and 4,500 words (!) later, this monstrosity was born._

_Abandon all hope ye who enter here: this is pure, unadulterated, unredeemable fluff. Seriously. My cats are looking at it in disdain. I am so sorry._

_Title from "Something Good." Thanks, Rodgers and Hammerstein._

* * *

She remembers the colors most.

A little girl with blonde ringlets in a hunter green velvet dress climbing red carpeted stairs, a small hand wrapped around a shiny brass handrail, black patent leather Mary Janes lifting and falling as she ascends all the way to the top – a princess in a tower, overlooking her kingdom, even though she's living the furthest thing from a fairytale.

She remembers turning with every step when she and her mother reach the upper balcony and head to their seats in the last row, looking over her shoulder as the industrial charcoal of the lighting truss is lowered into perfect position. She watches as the filters slide into place, preparing to beam a spectrum of illumination of the space below. She's so entranced by the way everything moves and breathes that she misses the kindly older couple in the first row of the balcony summon her mother, in so many ways still a child herself in a very grown-up world, and Felicity stays on the steps halfway between the two points as the man offers them his seats so that they can have a better view of the show.

(She'll think later that the weariness of being a single mother must've read as blatantly as the marquee outside the playhouse announcing the annual December production of _The Sound of Music_, and she'll always wonder just how bright her mother's eyes must've shone with tears of gratitude. All she remembers is leaning forward and over the balcony railing, breathing in the flashes of movement and light in the auditorium, and how the pictures in the glossy program danced even in the dark.)

She rests her chin on the brass bar in front of her, sitting on the edge of her seat even through intermission, engrossed in the story of a girl walking until she found a place that feels like home – feels like the life she not only wants but deserves, accompanied by someone who could've been a foe, an enemy, but was instead a friend, and a few favorite things.

(She never wants the night to end – the light from the abbey to the Von Trapp home to the hills of Europe plays against her closed eyelids that night, and it stays with her long after that next morning, when she asks her mother to paint her nails the same bright blue as Maria's dress – so in a way, it never does.)

* * *

She's out of place that first semester at MIT; not glaringly so, but displaced just enough that everything feels just two inches off-center – this is the place for her, she knows, but her steps are as unsure as they've ever been, and she feels like she keeps running into obstacles she should've seen clearly and avoided just as easily.

Though it's not a world war, it's still a battle and the front lines are closing in.

But she's nothing if not a fighter, so she looks for familiarity, for things she knows and she studies the things she must learn, and when she arrives for one of her classes early and overhears her professor lamenting to a TA about an unexpectedly absent lighting assistant at the Boston Children's Theatre production of _The Sound of Music_, finally it's her shifting something – her nerves – and offers her services. She's never worked a tech crew before, but she's seen the production enough times and enough ways that she thinks she could learn the choreography and effects changes quickly, and there's not a program or piece of equipment that has bested her.

She arrives at rehearsal the next afternoon, is introduced to the lighting director, and sets to work.

She feels the story more keenly now; wears the weight of being unsure and ostensibly alone as uncomfortably as Maria can't don her nun's habit. What she can't know – what she can't yet see, so deep in the valleys and in the shadows of the mountains looming in front of her – is that this is just her first production with the Company; she bonds with the directors, the kids and their families, and her professor takes the unusual step of asking her to TA for her during Felicity's senior year. Though she's behind the board, she the one who starts to shine, and later she'll recall the strange looks on the T on her way back from rehearsal that first night, and only as she steps into her dorm room does she realize she's been humming "I Have Confidence" under her breath, because, at last, she really, unequivocally does.

* * *

She literally bumps into him; of all the lobbies in all the cities…

He rights her – he always does, in this world of wrongs – and her smile is wide and genuinely happy even in its confusion.

(It doesn't seem to matter that she saw him literally an hour ago, or that they'd not had a great day at QC in those real life masks that seem to be the fakest of them all; she's steadier with him around – anchors and surety, lighthouses and shores.)

"What are you doing here?" they ask in tandem, and laugh in sync and the same breath, their timing falling into circadian rhythm as it always does – as though nothing could really make them fall _out_ – and it's only when a second voice pops up from behind his broad frame that the spell shimmers and falls away like the opening curtain for which they're waiting.

"Clearly, she's here to get an oil change." With an expression with significantly far less heat than the one her brother is throwing at Felicity as he takes in her mint cap sleeved lace gown, Thea steps out from Oliver with a warm smile. "You look gorgeous!"

Felicity blushes. "Rent the Runway," she finds herself saying, and the tint on her face deepens in embarrassment. _Protip #438 in __How to Make an Ass Out Of Yourself Without Really Trying: A Treatise on Life_ _by Felicity Smoak, _she thinks_, talk about rented couture to a billionaire. _But Thea merely steps forward and threads her arm through Felicity's quickly crooked elbow and says, "Oh, my God, I got my hands on the most _gorgeous_ Zac Posen last week. The stores downtown don't even carry the collection, can you believe it? And the _shoes_ I found…"

They're walking before Felicity realizes her feet are moving, and when she recognizes Thea's steering her toward a private box, she stops a little short, and Oliver, who'd been trailing protectively behind them –always in her periphery, even when he's not – comes to rest close enough that his hand falls to her hip and his breath is so warm on her ear that it sends a shiver down her spine. "Oh, uh, my seat's upstairs, actually."

Thea looks at her as though she's speaking Greek. "Well, of _course_ you're sitting with us."

She looks between the two siblings, settling her gaze back on Thea when, for the first time in a long time, she can't identify the look on Oliver's face. "Oh, I couldn't."

"Yes, you could. You _are,"_ the brunette replies, hands on her hips, and Felicity realizes the steely determination has to be a Dearden trait, because like her mother and brother before her, Thea's now wearing it in spades.

"Thea," Oliver warns.

"Oh, wait. I just realized you had to spend all day looking at this face," Thea replies, hooking a thumb toward Oliver. "Making you do it off the clock is just cruel. Forget I said anything. Go. Enjoy the show."

Felicity has to snort softly at that, and it blossoms into a laugh, something warm and full – not unlike the feelings about she refuses to name but that live within her so much they define symbiosis – when she glances to Oliver and sees his annoyed expression. She puts a hand on his arm – something she's done a thousand times before, but this feels new and electric now; lighter, somehow – but tamps it down as she teases with a wink, "We all have our burdens to bear. This," she waves her hand in a circle as she motions to his face, "is just yours. We'll help you overcome it."

"Hey, do you think they'd let us borrow the mask from _Phantom?_" Thea asks as she starts them walking again, and when Felicity steps forward, she feels Oliver's hand wrap around her waist in earnest, causing her heartbeat to buzz slightly in her ears. "It'd cover half his face, at least. That's a start."

"Mm, I don't know if he can pull off a mask," Felicity replies, throwing another grin over her shoulder at Oliver, one he returns.

(She tries not to notice how he flexes his hand against the small of her back in testing and possession before returning it to her waist, grip even tighter than before.

For once in her life, Felicity Smoak tries and fails at something.

She reaches back just as she's always reached out, and their fingers are threading together just as they reach their seats.

She's not sure if she's relieved or disappointed when he pulls his hand away to guide her to her seat.)

Thea doesn't sit immediately, greeting the usher like an old friend and inviting him and his family to the Glades community holiday party she's hosting next week at Verdant. Felicity looks up from her program when she sees Thea take a step like she's leaving. Oliver, of course, notices it too and asks with an arched brow, "Please tell me you're not going to go fish through props for that mask."

Thea mimics his expression perfectly. "I'm just going to go freshen up. And no, you may not accompany me. I'm a big girl."

There's a wistfulness to Oliver's eyes that Felicity sees even in the muted light of the theatre when he replies, "I know."

Thea leans down and kisses his cheek, running her thumb over the trace of lipstick she leaves there, and then pinches her brother's cheek for good measure. She giggles as she leaves, and it's a hopeful sound, one that carries straight past Felicity's ears and to her heart.

She's smiling as she reaches for the opera glasses that have been set in the box, and feels Oliver's eyes on her. She meets his gaze as she sits back, crossing her legs and draping the chiffon so that it lays properly across her knees.

His mouth opens, and there's just the hint of a hitch in his breath, like he wants to say something other than what he settles on. "You didn't mention you were planning on being here."

"I've been coming every year since I was a little girl," she says softly, smiling when he leans forward and puts a tender hand on her arm, a silent sign that she doesn't have to say anything more if she doesn't want to. But she trusts him above all others and with all things, and continues, "We didn't have a lot of money after my dad left. My mom worked three jobs and we barely made ends meet, but every year, she'd save just enough so we could come here and see a show. I'd get all dressed up and she'd buy me a program or a Shirley Temple, and we'd sit up there—" she points to that far balcony and wonders who's sitting in her seat now, "and it was..."

"Magical?" Oliver supplies in a throaty half-whisper, his hand moving from her arm to her shoulder, and as she does, her eyes slip shut at the contact, the feeling in her belly coiling as his thumb starts to move seemingly of its own volition, though she can't tell for certain, because the same tint from before has returned, and she's finding it hard to read.

"Everything," she counters softly. "It was…I got to be a little girl those nights. I didn't have to worry about whether or not she'd make enough at the diner or cleaning or filing to make rent, or how we'd put food on the table toward the end of the month."

His jaw tightens in the way it does when those he loves feels threatens, and despite the short sleeves on her dress in the drafty theatre, the thought that he wants to take that perceived hurt away warms her. "No, it's good," she says, watching as he visibly relaxes in front of her. "It made me so thankful for the little things; made me appreciate them more. They were good times; the _best _times. They were…"

"Permanent," he finishes for her. "Always."

She nods, turning in her chair and subsequently further into his hand, which cradles gently around her neck, and for a moment, she's back in her old office at QC and panda flats.

And then she realizes she doesn't want to be.

She's somehow ended up in this place, far from what she'd expected or even thought possible, and yet it glints with clarity and a sense of home as though it was the_ only_ destination; that there never any other place for her to be.

And no other person for her to be with.

She realizes the look she'd seen on his face earlier wasn't just a reaction to her dress, but instead to her proximity – their proximity to each other, and the inevitability contained within it. Even without trying, even walking a road so littered with broken promises and last chances that they couldn't even see the good intentions allegedly laid between the bricks, even with all the wrong turns and unreadable maps – even on a path they forged and not pointed to through an arrow of any kind – they'd ended up at a beginning.

_Their _beginning.

(She can't wait to get started.)

"Thank you for sharing it with me," Oliver murmurs in that low, delicious tone of his, and she can only nod, everything in her sparking when he starts to rub his thumb over her cheekbone. "And for being here."

(She knows he's not just talking about the theatre.

It feels like she's dreaming with her eyes wide open again.)

"Always," she repeats, and it's a vow in a way, because for her, he is; he is her permanent, as close to everything and everlasting as she'll ever get. They'll still fight to carve out an existence, but she can't think of a greater carpenter to have at her side.

There's a small noise from behind them as the lights flash in gentle warning that the show's about to begin, and Felicity turns away from him – it burns to even think about moving – but when Thea peeks in around the curtain she's been hiding behind so as not to interrupt the moment, both women are pleased to note that Oliver's hand doesn't move far, just down to Felicity's lap, strong and steady. She threads her fingers with his in a manner similar to the way her heart's been entwined with his for longer than she can remember, and settles back comfortably, both in her chair and in the shift everything's just taken.

("You're my something good," he tells her under a chuppah a little less than two years later, and on that day, she wears white instead of green.)

* * *

She plays dirty one night – well, to be fair, they're both dirty plenty of nights; that's how they wound up in this situation in the first place – but when their two-month-old wails her parents into awareness at 3:15 in the morning, Felicity feigns sleep even through Oliver's tired murmurs of, "Babe? You awake?" She doesn't move as he groans and gets out of bed – hey, she's just as exhausted – and listens to him patter down the hall toward the nursery.

"Claire Bear, we gotta talk," she hears through the monitor, and pictures him cradling their daughter against his bare chest, swaying sleepily on equally bare feet. "You gotta do this when Mom's awake, okay? And preferably when the sun's up, but let's focus on the first part if we can."

Claire seems uninterested in listening to him – Felicity has a flash to a blonde-haired, steely-eyed teenager with her hands on her hips and that Dearden determination in her eye and doesn't know if she should be amused or worried – and she can't help but smile at her husband's sigh as he takes her out of the nursery and heads to the kitchen to warm up a bottle.

She hears the shuffle of his pajama pants as he walks, the fabric rustling against the baby monitor he'd put in his pocket, and through the static can't really make out what he's talking to her about.

(They have their time, he tells her over and over again, just Daddy and Claire; no mommies allowed.

She falls a little more in love with him every time they keep a secret from her.

How things change.

How she likes them to.)

The interference disappears as he sets to warming one of the bottles she had prepared, and hears the drone of the TV as he flicks it on and finds the middle-of-the-night airing of SportsCenter. She falls back asleep as he and Claire discuss the AL East standings, and when she wakes at her normal-for-her time of 5:30 _(thanks for that, Claire,_ she thinks fondly, knowing – like most things in her life – she wouldn't have it any other way) , she finds them curled up on the couch in the living room, Claire tucked safely and securely in her father's strong arms.

It's not that sight that brings tears to her eyes; it's the fact that ESPN is no longer playing on their television. Instead, the DVD player menu is flashing, and the note she'd written when she'd simultaneously handed him the positive pregnancy test and the anniversary reissue of _The Sound of Music_ is propped against the remotes.

Even with the flickering light from the television, it's still too dark to see in unfiltered detail, but she knows the words by heart, having thought long and hard about how to tell him. She'd finally settled on, _how about we let Julie sing the baby to sleep?_

A groggy voice cuts into her reverie. "She fell asleep before the puppet show."

Felicity clucks her tongue softly, running a hand over Oliver's head before repeating the gesture to their daughter. "That's the best part. Are we sure she's ours?"

"We can buy one of those DNA kits and double check." He moves to sit up, but Felicity puts a strong hand on his shoulder, and he settles back against the cushion, widening his legs when she moves around the couch to join them. She slides into position, sitting with her back to his front, and he expertly and gently slides Claire into her arms before wrapping his own around his wife, kissing her temple.

(Neither of them have known all halcyon days; there were few protective shadows from white picket fences. But they've built their own house of dreams; defined perfection for themselves and carved it into existence, as visible and lasting as the notch marks in doorjambs that chronicle their family as it grows.

And Julie does indeed sing Claire to sleep. She sings Amelia to sleep, too.

Margaret, named for her grandmother who passes the year before her third granddaughter is born, prefers Lesley Ann Warren and _Cinderella._)

* * *

"Mags, we're almost ready to go. Time to get a move on."

"Mom, have you seen my –"

"Hanging in the closet. Maggie, you have thirty seconds to put that book down and get your shoes on."

"Babe, do you know where –"

"Already in my purse. Margaret Anne Queen, I am not going to ask you again."

"Technically, you haven't asked. You've told."

"Do not think for a second I won't leave you on a leash outside while we're in Serendipity enjoying dessert."

"You're equating me to a _dog_?"

"Of course not, honey. Dogs _listen_…_thank_ you." With a stifled sigh – how many times has she done that, she wonders idly – she checks her hair and makeup in the mirror one final time, taking note of the lines that she would swear under oath were put there more by her three girls than anything she and her husband may have gotten up to.

Three girls, who despite their apparent inability to find or put shoes on – not that their father was much better, momentarily misplacing the tickets to their eldest daughter's stage debut as Liesl – to whom she has made the most sacred of vows, just like the ones she made to their father; the ones for whom she would string all the bows to protect, and for whom she and Oliver still fight, in Starling and beyond – even if he has a little physical help from a protégé or two.

That triggers something in the back of Felicity's mind, and she steps into the bathroom, shutting the door and stepping to her husband, who's still fighting with his bowtie. He turns and she reaches simultaneously and silently; this dance they do isn't one they've fallen into, but one they've carefully choreographed, though since that first night at the theatre, they've known exactly what tempo to set.

"Did you check in with Connor?" she asks quietly as she flips one end of the tie over the other and starts in on the knot.

"All quiet on the western front," he confirms. "How's our leading lady?"

"I think I'm more nervous than she is," Felicity confesses, threading the fabric through the loop she's just made. "I mean, it's _Broadway. _Our little girl's on _Broadway, _Oliver."

He chuckles, and she takes in his features and how they're framed by the little touches of grey that are trying to sprout up around his temples. "And in the 75th anniversary of the production, no less."

"I know she'll go back to being the understudy after Hannah gets back from her auditions in LA, but –"

"She'll be on the main stage tonight." He makes a face. "That came out horribly wrong."

"I have the oddest sense of déjà vu," she teases, pulling the tie even and patting at his lapels. "What do you think?"

"I think nobody's going to be looking at me with you looking like that." He raises her left hand to his mouth and kisses her wedding ring. "You look beautiful, babe."

An insistent knocking explodes against the door behind her, and Maggie calls, "If you're not out here in thirty seconds, I'm heading back to the book, and you might not get me back this time."

(It turns out the Dearden determination is second only to the sass gene in terms of dominance.

There are days when she finds herself wishing she'd gotten more of her girls with their hands on their hips than their tongues in their cheeks.)

Felicity sighs and leans forward, resting her head wearily against Oliver's chest. He laughs softly, running his hand across the top of her head and stopping to cup her cheek, and she shivers a little bit beneath the combination of his touch and the coolness of his ring against her skin. She leans back and in a fluid motion, he leans down and presses a kiss to her lips. "Once more into the breach, Mrs. Queen."

They make it out of their room relatively unscathed – Maggie wins negotiations to bring her book with her ("Intermission, Mom, duh," she says. Felicity smacks Oliver when he repeats, "Yeah, Mom, _duh_") – and meet Thea, Roy and their son in the lobby. Moira's apparently there, too, but Felicity can't see her behind the pile of flowers in her hands.

Flurries are falling as they exit the hotel, and Maggie pulls her nose out of her book long enough to turn on her toes like a ballerina amongst them. Felicity has a flash of walking in on her girls with their dad – always more secrets, still no mommies allowed – Maggie, a toddler and clapping along to "The Lonely Goatherd" from her playpen, Claire on top of the coffee table singing with gusto into a wooden spoon, and Amelia carefully balancing on Oliver's toes, swaying back forth, grinning brightly up at her father as they danced.

They climb into two cars for the ride to the theatre, and New York flies by almost as much as the time has. Maggie reads the entire way, her eleven-year-old electric personality momentarily quieted as her equally bright mind thrived at Hogwarts just like her mother's did – with the same books, no less – and Amelia – her quiet, sensitive girl – is telling her father she doesn't want a big fifteenth birthday party like Claire had; maybe just a sleepover with some friends.

Felicity's mind, however, is on her eldest, who learned to sing out before she learned to sing along; who had always been center stage in her parents' lives but decided she wanted other people to see her, too – the irony of how much hiding her parents have done versus how open Claire is never escapes her mother – and who dreamed big, always fighting until she got what she wanted.

(Felicity likes to think that part's not genetic, but more learned by example, and she caresses Oliver's foot from across the limo, a silent confirmation that she's proud of what they've accomplished, what they've built, and she's ready to see what lies beyond the next mountain.)

Her heart is in her throat as the curtain goes up, and she fumbles for Oliver's hand. He rubs his thumb over his knuckles but her grip never wavers, and she finds herself speaking and singing along with the production under her breath, as though that would help Claire remember her lines. Felicity's done it in every production she's ever been in, just as Oliver has always been on edge, his pulse quickening amid the colors and the movement, still ready at a moment's notice to save those most important to him.

(She chooses to think of it as a new theatre tradition for the Queen family.

She can hear the echoes whispering when they both lean forward during "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," and she takes a moment to hope there's a little girl in the top balcony doing the same thing.

She knows for certain, though, that the pride of being Claire's mother reads as plainly as her own mother's expression did back in that much smaller theatre in Starling, and when she looks up to blink away tears, she hopes her mom is proud – not only of her, but of her granddaughters; of the lives and legacies they're building.

When Claire takes her bow, all of the Queens are on their feet cheering like there's no tomorrow.

(For all of them, there nearly wasn't.

When the end does come, she remembers the colors most, especially the ones she painted with.)

fin

* * *

_You survived! Thank God. Here's your complimentary t-shirt and toothbrush._


End file.
